It’s Monday! The start of the week is a great time to talk about motivation.
No country ever was built by people sleeping in. Austria was not built by people sleeping in. America was not built by people sleeping in. People struggled, people suffered, people worked their asses off to build this country.
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger
Me
For over three weeks now, I’ve been various degrees of sick. All my podcasting has come to a complete stop. Early in my illness, as I cancelled about 10 scheduled conversations, I was aware that I could be—just possibly—ending my podcasting career.
And I spent time thinking about that. We all know we will stop at some point. So what exactly would be wrong with stopping right here? (My thinking went, in that moment.)
Nothing would be wrong.
This is not a post fishing for your support.
You
Rather, I’m suggesting that you be intentional with what you use to fuel your podcasting work.
Sanderson argues you should instead experiment to figure out what combination of motivation, and circumstances, and accountability work best for your particular personality. He responds well to tracking a daily word count in a spreadsheet. Others, he notes, thrive under the social pressures of a writing group, while others lean on deadlines to induce work. The key is recognizing that the urge to avoid hard things is human, and should be expected. It’s part of the process.
~ Cal Newport from, Brandon Sanderson's Advice for Doing Hard Things - Cal Newport
If you’re thinking, “I should be doing . . .” — are you sure about that? Maybe what you are doing today, yesterday, the past week, the past month… is just the perfect thing for you to have been doing.
Yes, this is called self-acceptance. I hope it’s a lesson you have already deeply assimilated.
Us
Two Podtalk episodes…
And a great Workbench topic related to motivation…
but WAS able to listen to the Kira Higgs Episode with you on tension - brilliant and eloquent and she said better than I can - what I was going to say to this post on motivation.